February 17, 2026 • 46 mins
If you’ve ever been out of your house you’ve probably been in a crowd before. They can be as mundane as an elevator full of people or as consequential as a mass of protesters. But did you know there’s psychology to crowds? And they follow fluid dynamics?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry, and he squeezes together in a one meter
square space. We're still doing pretty good on Stuff you
should Know, you.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Know, as funny as I was reading, and then we'll get
to it. But when things start to become problematic as
far as people per square meter, and I started to panic.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Oh really, Yeah, that didn't get me, But it occurred
to me that some people listening to this are going
to feel that way too.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, because we're talking about crowds, and if even the
discussion of being in very close proximity to someone else
triggers you, then consider this your warning.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, great, great job, Chuck. Yeah, sure, So we are
talking crowds today, Chuck, you spoiled the entire episode by
mentioning that, Yeah, I'm just kidding, buddy. And generally think
of this this huge mass of people, say like at
a concert or something like that, or a show if
you're into indie bands, but it can be any assemblage
(01:14):
of people, any group of people. I'm guessing more than
two if that old adage is correct, about three being
a crowd, but it can be anything from a bunch
of people in an elevator to a bunch of people
going to Mecca flocking to Mecca for the Hodge on
any given year.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, I think like technically just any any grouping who
put this one together.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
By the way, initially.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
This was a Julia joint And thank you for reminding
me before we go further. Kimberly from the Prison Labor
listener Mail is the person who got this one going.
So thanks Kimberly.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Okay, yeah, thanks big time because I thought this was
super interesting. But yeah, yeah, I mean Julia did some
research and basically came back with this a crowd as
any group of people temporarily gathered in the same physical
relatively close to each other elevators.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Sure, I mean it's a little surprising if you think
about it. For some reason, I got hooked on the
elevator thing. But there's a lot of different reasons those
people could be together. They're all going to different floors
in the same building, say if they happen to be
on an elevator, or they could all have a shared
interest they're all at a gun show, or they have
(02:25):
a shared goal they're trying to overthrow their regime, their
ruling regime. There's all sorts of different reasons people come
together in crowds. Sometimes it's on purpose, sometimes it's not
planned by that person, but it just happens. And one
of the cool things is we've been studying crowds through
all sorts of different lenses, and we've kind of whittled
(02:46):
down to the fact that humans are essentially innately good
at navigating crowds for the most part.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, you know, some of the stuff Julia came back
with was fairly like you might be a little scared
of crowds, but it is good to know that that
is sort of outdated thinking and why we will talk
about bad things that can happen in crowds. The modern
understanding of crowds, You're right, is that people are generally
pretty orderly, even in the face of disaster, and the
(03:20):
things that make a crowd go bad. A lot of
times it's not the crowd's fault.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, they get blamed by authorities very frequently in retrospect,
and then in further retrospect it turns out like, no, actually,
the authorities are probably at fault in this case.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, I mean it's almost as if sometimes a peaceful
protest can turn bad when an armed military shows up, right,
just the presence of that, just the presence and then
other things that happen after.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Right, So yes, and we'll talk about that for sure,
because there is a huge role for law enforcement and
dealing with crowds, like it's part of their job. Sure,
crowd out, they say crowd control, but that's apparently an
outdated term as well. But dealing with crowds, managing crowds,
So that's part of their job. That's not gonna go away.
We don't really want it to go away. Instead, we
(04:11):
want law enforcement to do it in the using the
best practices that have been proven over and over again
that cut down the chance of a crowd turning ugly
by huge percentages.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, but you know, one thing is for sure, like
people behave differently in crowds, and sometimes it's great. You know,
I never I never dance like this man, but I'm
at burning man and look at me all of a sudden, right,
or it can turn bad and we're gonna we're gonna
cover all angles.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Well, let's talk about some of the bad ones, because
there are some famous ones that this happens. You don't
want to say a lot, but it's one of those
things like a plane crash, where it seems like it
will happen all the time because it's just so shocking
details of it. Whenever it does happen, it seems like
it happens way more frequently. That's just not the case.
But when it does happen, like I said, it can
(05:03):
be pretty bad.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, you know, because people can get trampled, people can
be squashed by force, like in a crowd rush. Pressure
can reach a thousand pounds of force, which is a lot. Yeah,
that can lead to loss of life, notably, like you said,
we're going to mention a handful, but the Astro World
Festival in Houston very sadly in twenty twenty one at
the Travis Scott performance, ten people lost their lives and
(05:26):
many more were injured.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, there was one I hadn't heard of that was
pretty bad, quite bad. It happened at the coronation of
Zar Nicholas the Second in Moscow in eighteen ninety six. Yeah,
there was a crowd of half a million people who
were all there for the coronation, and they knew that
they were giving out free souvenirs. Essentially, I saw half
a pound of sausage, bags of nuts, a souvenir cup,
(05:50):
and apparently they had enough for everybody, but a rumor
spread in the crowd that they didn't have enough for everybody,
so the people in the back started pushing. A stampede
broke out. In thirteen one hundred people died.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yeah, it feels like concerts.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
In sporting events, it can be dozens of people, which
is all incredibly sad, But when people in the order
of thousands are dying, yeah, from an event, that's pretty striking.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And that really follows the model. It seems like for
loss of life in crowd crushes, there's some sort of
bottleneck toward the front, and it's wider in back, so
people in back start pushing and the people in front
can't go forward, so they get crushed. That seems to
be like the case. That's what happened in Astro World,
(06:33):
That's what happened in Moscow, That's what happened in Dusburg, Germany,
at the world's largest techno festival, the Love Parade.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Twenty ten twenty one people died and it was a
tunnel in that case.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, it also happened. I mentioned the Haje and two
thousand people. Two thousand people died at the Hajje as
part of that annual pilgrim to Mecca that all Muslims
are required to do at least once in their lifetime. Well,
they have like on the order of one and a
half million people, up to two million people every year
(07:11):
do this thing. And in twenty fifteen, two thousand people
died because there was a bottleneck people push from the back,
and that actually broke the previous record of the most
people killed in a crowd crush that was also at
the Hajj, this time in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yeah, super super sad. Because of all these tragedies, people
have been studying how people move through crowds, crowd dynamics.
It's you know, they use a lot of different sciences.
Physics definitely is one, and we're going to talk about
all these, but also physiology, psychology certainly, and what they're
looking at is human behavior, how people behave when they
(07:51):
get into crowd because it changes once you have sort
of a veil of anonymity going on, and again it
can be good or bad. But they use this in
all all kinds of modeling, whether it's you know, in
city planning or certainly event preparation, disaster management, crowd management,
all kinds of people like we'll pay people a lot
of money to study and give their findings.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
And you mentioned applying the principles of physics to studying this.
I think that started in the fifties. And it's not
like tit for tat, but the movement and the formation
of crowds resembles it so much that you can basically
use physics terms like orbital motion or oscillators to basically
(08:34):
describe how people behave in a crowd and how crowds
behave themselves. One of the ways of looking at a
systems theory and complex adapted systems are what crowds do.
It's chaotic at first, but then they start to move
together as a whole. Lines of communication develop without speech.
It's just kind of like the crowd learns through feedback
(08:55):
and it just starts. It becomes a cohesive of whole
rather than just a bunch of people together into space.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, I mean, certainly fluid dynamics is a factor, and
they kind of use some of that terminology as well
when talking about crowds, because if you're a fluid, like
let's say you're a liquid or even a gas, the
particles are really tightly packed, but they're never actually colliding
because they have electrons repelling each other. Yeah, we do
a similar thing, but it's called what's known as social force.
(09:27):
It's that thing when you're in a crowd and you
just unconsciously instinctively navigate without like constantly bumping into other people,
at least if.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
You're doing it right right.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I've been in crowds where people are a little more unaware,
and there may be reasons for that, so I'm not
like casting aspersions. But generally speaking, your body is just
automatically adjusting because you want that path of least resistance.
You don't want to be banging into people all around you.
And even in great crowds like a huge excited stadium
(10:03):
after a big sports win or after a big energetic
concert or something, you still find your way out of
there generally, you know, not making contact with other people.
Maybe slight you know, bumps here and there, but unless
someone really has their head up their butt or they're
super drunk, or there may be other you know, some
(10:24):
genuine factor. They can't help. They're not just banging right
into people constantly.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah. That made me wonder if it's electrons repelling each
other that keeps liquids from bumping into one another. I
wonder if the collective group of electrons in our bodies
are what makes us inherently makes us inherently avoid it
and almostatic sense for that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I like that, Eddie.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It's like the quantum explanation of swerving.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah, little hippie dippy.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So there are a couple things that we've figured out
about crowds that the way that they behave is again,
this is spontaneous. I don't even know if we've said it,
so maybe not. Again, it's spontaneous, it's unconscious typically, and
it's collective. Right, So we're actually moving cooperatively with other people,
whether we realize it or not. We think we're just
(11:12):
trying to make it to the exit because we want
to get to our car first so we can get
the heck out of the parking lot as soon as possible.
But we're actually unconsciously moving in conjunction with other people.
One of the really great ways that that expresses itself
is in lane formation, which is well, it's exactly what
it sounds like, right.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, it's people kind of gathering and moving in one
direction together forming a lane. No one's taking the lead
and saying everyone, this is the United States, So we
generally walk down the right side of the hallway or
the corridor and other people on the left. That is
something when I've traveled abroad I had to get used
to because I didn't realize the rules of the road
(11:55):
typically apply to moving around the world as well. So
I I didn't know that until I went over to
England for the first time and was bumping into people constantly.
But yeah, here in the United States, it's generally right side,
left side or I guess it doesn't explain it well,
but no, you did you move along the right side
of a hallway?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Sure, And that's just a difference in the electron spin
of people in Europe and the people in the US.
Oh Man, I also mentioned orbital motion too, right, So
apparently in a crowd people moving in the same direction,
or if you're in a crowd, that's just basically in
one place. I think they studied the Festival of the
(12:35):
Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. To get this information.
You basically create you move in a circle in an
orbit is what they call it, and you complete this
orbit in about eighteen seconds. And when I was reading this,
I'm like, that's just not true. And then I went
and watched video of this study, and yes, people just
(12:56):
move around in a tight circle. Basically, you're moving because
other people are moving, but you're ultimately you're keeping your
same space this one orbital circle, which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
I mean to be clear, because that sounded slightly confusing.
People are not walking in a tight circle. You're just
moving your body within a circular space, right, like maybe
raising your elbow to scratch your head or something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Right, So imagine imagine the person in front of you.
Imagine the person in front of you is backing up,
so you back up and then you maybe moved to
the right, and then they move this way and you
kind of come forward to your left, and then you
kind of back up a little bit to your left,
and then you back up center like that. So you're
facing the same way the whole time, but you're just
(13:43):
shuffling your feet in the way that you're doing this.
You're ultimately creating an orbit.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah, and I think that also applies to just taking
up your personal space with general body.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yes, the electrons.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
So this this works out pretty great, this idea of
social force, it seems to work pretty well. And even
in big crowds, when it starts to get a little
more highly dense is when it's a problem. And this
is where you might get triggered. Like I was. And
I don't even mind crowds, but when it started talking
and getting like denser and denser, I just found myself
(14:17):
getting a little you know, my breathing sort of increased.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So at two people per square meter, a crowd moves
a little slower because they're still trying to you know,
get that distance between you and and your friend next
to you. Four people, you're going to start to bump
around a little bit. At six people, things get truly difficult.
And at ten people per square meter and I measured
that out on the floor, that made me panic a
(14:42):
little bit. That means individual movement is basically impossible, and
the likelihood of, like in a big crowd that's that dense,
something bad is likely to happen.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah, this is the point where you can't raise your arms,
they're at your side. If a crush starts to have happened,
you can't breathe, so they're like, you can die of asphyxiation.
There is a very famous tragedy in twenty twenty two
in Soul, a Taiwan, tragedy where kids in their twenties,
(15:14):
healthy kids in their twenties died of heart attacks because
they asphyxiated and their heart stopped because of a crowd crush. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And if you're wondering what this all looks like, we
didn't do big max. Should do one big max, but
six people per square meter where you know it's not tragic,
but movement is difficult. That's about seventeen hundred people packed
onto a tennis court.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yep, So that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah, and that was at six. We're talking ten is
when you can really be in trouble. Now, that is
not guaranteed that something's going to go wrong. In a
Taiwan there were like this, This situation was going on
for an hour or so before it turned problematic. So
as long as the people in the back are doing
(16:00):
good and not pushing, as long as somebody in the
center doesn't faint and fall over or trip and fall down.
This can work. It's not inherently going to be deadly,
but the chances of it becoming dead it's just sitting
there balancing on the razor's edge at that point, it's
a really dangerous place to be.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah, it's that one triggering incident is when it can
really go south there.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, for sure, it's scary.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Shall we take a break, Yes, all right, we'll be
right back with more crowds.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Stop you shut.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
All right. So we covered partially coverage physics.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
We should talk a little bit about psychology because crowds
have their own distinct psychology around them as well, and
people can behave in ways that they don't normally behave
in a crowd just because of that psychology. And early
on the explanation for that was like, if there's a
violent crowd, then it was just full of violent people, right.
(17:21):
And there was a French psychologist named Gustave Lebon in
eighteen ninety five who wrote the literal book on this,
like the first one called the Crowd Colon a Study
of the Popular Mind, and it was very influential. But
this is one of those that's a little outdated in
a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, it's right in some ways. But his whole thing was, like,
you have any crowd together, they're inherently mindless, they form
a collective mind, they become capable of anything. They're very suggestible.
They're going to kill everybody in their path, right, and
like there are crowds that have done that before. Sure,
but that's not the inherent I guess trait of crowds.
(18:04):
Like crowds are actually the opposite. They're actually way more
peaceful and pro social than that. But Lebon essentially set
the view of crowds that's still persistent today in a
lot of quarters. And he did. Yeah, he just had
a huge impact on this.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Absolutely, if you look at the different explanations over the
years of like this collective behavior, because collective behavior is
definitely happening.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
Yeah, there are a few different theories.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
One is a contagion theory and that was put forth
by Lebon himself, which is that this irrational behaviors that
happened in a crowd spreads like a virus. Yeah, that
can happen, and it also can't. So I'm sort of
fifty to fifty on that one.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah. Again, like all of this stuff makes sense. It's
just not like this is the most salacious rare version
of crowds, right. Yeah, you can also make the case
like good positive behavior can be contagious in a crowd
as well, because, like you said, people behave differently in crowds.
That's just a fact.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Yeah, like that dancing at Burning Man.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, exactly. There's also convergence theory, which also makes a
bit of sense that explains why crowds have a collective mind,
and it just basically says that's because crowds are made
up of similar people. Like usually there's not a lot
of crowd like mindless, say behavior on an elevator, because
everybody there didn't come together on the elevator to protest something.
(19:34):
But if you have a protest, there's way more potential
for collective mind behavior because there's people who are there
for the same reason, So they're sharing kind of a
wavelength already when they get there.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, if you're at that concert together, you're there because
you're you want to see Bob Dylan in person, all right,
for the same reason.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Sure, Or you want to hear David Crosby harangue you.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Oh man, he will too, or he would have he did.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Oh yeah, Okay, so that's convergence. There's also group mind
theory a little on the nose. It's basically saying like,
you lose your individual identity and it's replaced as a part,
a cog of this larger group's identity. Yeah, yeah again,
I guess. Yeah, it's not totally off. Social identity theory
(20:24):
seems to be the prevalent, dominant view of I guess
kind of d individuation in crowds.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, that's where you just you're acting like everyone else
is acting because you just want to fit in.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, you can't really put it better than that.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
So how do you become a crowd member? There are
a few key concepts there.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
First, you have to get training, go to school.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Got to go to crowd school, all right, Uh, And
the first thing you need in crowd school is a
lot of people in a very tight spot.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
It's called panic school.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Feeling right now, by the way, I'm okay, And it's
weird because I don't have like, what's it called claustrophobia necessarily.
I think it's more for me, just like I can't
wait to get out of that crowd because I just
want to have a little space.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Maybe I do have a little clusterphobiah.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like it, but I think
everybody does to a degree.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
It's just I guess.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, but I've never you know, I can accept hugs.
And I was never one of those kids like under
the dog pile that was like freaking out or.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Anything like that.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh yeah, I did not like that.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
Yeah, well you have a little claustrophobia, right.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, a little bit. I've kind of outgrown it a lot.
But yeah, if you put me in like a sewer
culvert or hearing about like a caving accident, I mean
I'll start Yeah, I can't handle that.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Well, maybe you have a fear of dying.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
That could be it.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
That might be what's going on, which is rational.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
But what are we talking about.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
We're talking about the three key concepts that form these
foundations of collected behavior, and they are d oh Man,
D individuation, Yeah, emotional contagion, and suggestibility. And that first one,
D individuation is basically like kind of what you were
(22:18):
hinting at earlier, is there's this new social identity and
your individual identity is taking a break.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, And this is a good example of how this
stuff can kind of make sense, but it's also like
you really just paid attention to the worst part of it.
And this came from Philip Bombardo. Remember him from the
Stanford Prison experiment. Oh yeah, that was all about d individuation.
So yeah, he focused some work on crowds, and essentially
what he said is that, yeah, you just basically leave
(22:48):
your own identity at the door. You take on a
new identity of crowd member, group member, and basically whatever
the group's up for, e're up for. Two. You feel anonymous,
you feel unidentified. You also feel connected to those other people,
and so if those other people start, you know, looting
or something like that, you would probably never loot by yourself, right,
(23:12):
But since you're in that group, you've lost your individual
identity that would prevent you from looting. Now it's like, well, yeah,
I mean I'm part of this group and we're looting,
so let's get to it.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
I think that's fascinating and I think that is so
true and happens all the time, and we've seen it
in all across Like I feel like in recent years,
especially with various protests and you know, things that people
might call riots, things that people might call insurrections where
people that normally wouldn't behave in a certain way, like, Hey,
(23:45):
I was going down to the Capitol Building to voice
my opinion about how this country is being run, and
next thing you know, I'm beating a cop down with
a flagpole, and that normally I would not do something.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Like that exactly, And that's a great example of that.
On the other side of it, you might never dance
with your shirt out wearing nothing but a loincloth burning
me yes, But in a different situation, you could be
having just one of the greatest moments of your life totally.
And that's not just the ecstasy speaking friend, that is
you being a part of a crowd and feeling that
(24:18):
kind of exhilaration of being part connected to something larger
than yourself. So it's the same thing in a sense.
You're deindividuated one way or another. It's just how is
it going? Is it going positive? Is it going negative?
Or is it even neutral?
Speaker 4 (24:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yeah, I think this is all just very fascinating. The
second one we mentioned was emotional contagion, and that is
just the fact that you know, emotions in a crowd
are heightened anyway if you're there at that concert or
that protest, you're highly emotional, probably for whatever reason you're there,
or if your team just won the big game and
you're leaving in a big crowd, so you're aware of
(24:59):
the people around you. But that like one person, and
you've seen it before in any of those circumstances where
one person again triggers something because they're extra emo, and
all of a sudden, everyone rises to meet that level
of emotion.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah. One thing I saw, though, I think it's part
of social identity theory, is that that depends on the
mood of the group or the norms of the group.
So if it's like a group that is generally saying like,
we're a peaceful protest, somebody can come up and throw
a Molotov cocktail and everybody else in the group's gonna
look at them like, what the heck are you doing. Yeah,
they will isolate that person, ostracize that person, and continue
(25:37):
on with their peaceful protests. But if the norm of
the group is like, yeah, we're being like repressed here
and somebody throws a Molotov cocktail, there's a good chance
that that crowd will change its norms to include throwing
molotov cocktails and more people will join in.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah, I mean you used to hang out in a
moshpit or two back in the day. I'm sure, right, yeah,
here and there, the mashpit. I mean, I think they
could be and they probably have been studied within the
crowd dynamics because it's sort of just a microcosm. But
I remember in those days and I wasn't like, oh man,
I can't wait to get in that mash pit, but
(26:13):
if one broke out around me, I would find myself
in it like having a good time, and the same
thing would happen. I was in moshpits where there was
one jerk throwing elbows and everyone's like, get out of here, dude.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
And then I've been in others where all of a
sudden that one dude triggered another dude, and then all
of a sudden it got.
Speaker 5 (26:31):
A little scary in there. And that's when.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Chuck took a walk.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And then also there's there's often that jerk that's like
not even in the pit. He just pushes people in
who weren't planning on joining.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Yeah, that should be a choice.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
That guy needs to soak his head.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I had a quick story here about the first or
not the first Lola Plusa, the one with the Beastie
Boys and at Lakewood Amphitheater, big outdoor Amphitheater on the lawn,
the mash pit behind us.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
I was in this one, but it got so big.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
It was about it big was it was about a
third of the size of an amphitheater lawn and it
was swirling in the circle and people started throwing up
their their cups and stuff, and there the trash around them,
and that stuff formed a whirlpool, a tunnel of trash. Wow,
as if a tornado was taking it up.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
That's amazing, or at least that's what I saw.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
That's you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
That's a world class mosh pit right there.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
It was.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I've never seen anything like it. And I've been around
a lot of big shows like that, and I've never
seen anything like that.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
That's like that part from American Beauty where the kid
sees the plastic bag caught up in the little whirlwind.
It's like, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Yeah, I used to think that was the best movie
ever hit. I don't think it's aged. Well, not just
not just because it's spacey. The whole thing is kind
of corny to me.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Now when I think about it, Well, I'm not gonna
watch it again then. Yeah, okay, there's one more I
guess aspect that you mentioned too, which is suggestibility, and
this is I think another Lebon thing, who, by the way,
as far as I can tell, is not related to
Simon Lebon. H Yeah, but Lebon basically was like they're
(28:14):
de individuated. They are basically capable of anything, and if
there's like that, you could tell them whatever and they'll
go do it. This definitely, I mean, just from recent
experience like this can happen, but it requires typically a
central leader or or organizer that people are looking to,
(28:35):
a charismatic speaker, somebody who can actually tap into that
collective mind and push it one direction or another. That
is possible, but again that is fairly rare when that
when something like that happens, but it again, it is possible.
It does happen sometimes.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Well, I mean I don't think we mentioned earlier. Hitler
and Mussolini both studied the works of Lebon.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
M Yeah, and I mean like they mobilized it to
their own ends. They used it to generate nationalism and
xenophobia and essentially create like their own fascist states. Because
it does work if you do it right and you
have a crowd in the right mindset.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
That's right, that's nuts, dude, Should we break or keep going?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
I say we.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
All right, we can break.
Speaker 6 (29:27):
You have my permission, stop you shut.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
So one of the great things Chuck about studying crowds
is that you you can figure out what makes crowds
do what, and they have in a lot of ways,
not just how they behave like physics or what the
psychology is behind crowds, but like what triggers crowds to say,
change their mood because remember I said, like depending on
the norms, like they may or may not behave violently
(30:16):
or unlawfully, and that can change with the same crowd
depending on the circumstances. And one of the like a
good example of that is that if you have been
if you're a law enforcement officer and you're there and
you basically your whole squad is like it's a protest,
So of course they're going to turn violent and they're
going to throw rocks at us and stuff like that.
(30:38):
Just being primed to believe that actually makes it more
likely that the crowd will behave that way. It's it's
not like we have it reversed. So like like you said,
just the presence of a law enforcement like group or
force in riot gear makes it more likely that a
crowd will turn violent.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah, for sure, they have this new I don't know
how widespread it is yet, but one of the newer
developments in this kind of quote unquote crowd control is
something called the dialogue team. Yeah, and that's when you
get your nicest cop I guess, yeah, and make them
the public facing face of that unit, and they put
(31:22):
them out in the lead and they communicate their purpose there,
their presence there, how they'd like things to go, and
it's and apparently it works a lot better than just
showing up and standing there, beating that billy club into
your hand and staring down at people in all your
heavy gear. Apparently that has a quite a great calming
(31:42):
effect on crowds and can even see the police presence
is a little more benevolent and cause the crowd to
maybe self police a little more.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah. Yeah, So the chances of the crowd turning ugly
is way decreased when you have that kind of that,
like you said, public facing kind of law enforcement, Like
you still have the riot gear. You may even still
have a line of guys with assault rifles with rubber
bullets and there's like the m wrap like off in
(32:13):
the distance, but that's not what you have up against
the crowd. You have friendly officers that are explaining that
they're there to protect your First Amendment rights but also
keep you safe. And yeah, like you said, self police
in getting a crowd to police itself. Yeah, is I mean,
that's just the pinnacle of crowd control totally. And it
isn't very widespread here, but it's a model that Europe
(32:36):
as a whole has adopted since the early two thousands
of the aughts. Yeah, and so it's starting to spread
over here, but it feels like it's more being that
it's being handed over from Europe to the academics in
America who are trying to give it to law enforcement
in America to take and run with.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah, and the key to any you know, regardless of
the dialogue team out in front, the key to any
sort of peaceful situation in a protest and dealing with
cops do is these cops have to be trained, like
super trained.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Training is the.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Key to every officer interaction that they take. And most
of these big tragedies that you can point to, and
not just in protests, but just any kind of these
crushing tragedies, Yeah, is the result of untrained officers in
a lot of cases.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah. Sometimes even the people who are in charge of
all of the police there might not be trained in
what they're doing. Like the Sheffield tragedy in I think
nineteen eighty nine. The police were blamed for that, although
the police initially blamed soccer hooligans and it was like, no,
the cops who were in charge of this had no
reason to be in charge of this. They had no
(33:51):
training whatsoever. Yea, So that is a huge one for sure.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
A couple of sociologists came along to do a lot
of the sort of official refutation of Lebon in the
twentieth century, and it was the Italian guy.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
You mentioned this guy, Henrico.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
I didn't, did I mention an Italian guy?
Speaker 4 (34:13):
I thought you mentioned an Italian guy.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
But regardless whether he's showing up for the first time
or the second, Okay, A guy named Enrico Quarantelli He
looked at a lot of emergency evacuations and studied them,
and he basically came to the conclusion that usually people
flee from these things, obviously because it's the sensible thing
to do, but it's not necessarily a panicked, irrational group
(34:37):
of people. They do so generally order in an orderly fashion.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk about emergency identity
because one of the things, one of the ways that
that crowds kind of create like a different a different
way of thinking is Let's say you have a group
of people on a subway, and the subway like it's
running normally. They are just a group of strangers trying
not to make eye contact with one another, on their
(35:02):
way home, on their way to work, on their way wherever.
They have no affiliation with one another aside from the
fact that they're currently sharing space with one another. If
that subway breaks down, those strangers become a group almost
instantly once they realize, okay, we're stuck. The human tendency
that recent scholarship has found is to come together as
(35:24):
a group, help one another, start to actually care what
happens to every other member of the group, trust one another,
treat one another with respect, and that that happens in
disaster after disaster after disaster, or subway breakdown after subway breakdown.
There was another sociologist I don't have his name, but
he studied like one hundred and eighty different peacetime disasters
(35:48):
and basically found, Yeah, there's jerks in every crowd, but
for the most part, they are the vast majority of
people act pro socially and positively to come together as
a group in the face of a disaster.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, that was Charles Fritz and I couldn't help but
think of Elaine Venice the second you mentioned the subway stopping.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Oh, I don't remember that one.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Oh it was the great Seinfeld episode where Elaine was
stuck on a out of work subway malfunctioning subway.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
It was pretty great.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I had a great experience in New York years ago,
and I might have told this one before, but where
there was a guy kind of stomping up and down
the subway platform saying he was going to shove someone
onto the oncoming train, and just instinctively, a group of
twenty New Yorkers and me went and gathered together in
(36:42):
a group with a mother and her baby at the
center of that atom.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
Wow, at the nucleus.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
And it wasn't no one said all right, everyone, let's
get together here. We all just stood together, got just
wandered closer to one another and probably all making our
way toward that woman and her baby. And before you
know it, there was a big group of us standing
in a circle. And that's the one where I went
and met the cops upstairs and led them to the guy.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I was pretty obvious who it was, but I was like, hey,
he's down here, and boy, New York City's finest.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
They acted with intention, that's all I'll all say.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I see, yeah, so what you just said. That story
undermines a very famous, misguided idea about crowds, the bystander effect,
which we talked about at great length in our episode
on Kitty Jenavsi.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
But one study I saw recently found that they were
studying all sorts of fights that were caught on like
security cameras or whatever. Uh huh, and I think ninety
percent of these fights at least one person intervened. Most
of the time more than one person intervened, and the
bystander effect says the more people there are, the less
(38:02):
likely anyone needs to act to help. They found the
opposite was true. The more people there were, the more
people helped intervene in this violent fight. So that whole
idea that people just don't do that is actually untrue.
It's based on misreporting by a New York Times article.
That's right, there are there's evidence that there are other
(38:24):
reasons people might not necessarily not render aid, but say,
not speak up or share their opinions because they're in
a group too. Right.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Uh. Yeah, that's sort of like if you're in a
classroom and the teacher asks if anyone has anything else
to say or whatever, or has any questions, and nobody
says anything, even though they might have questions.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I remember doing that.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
Sure it would still do that.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, I'm sure I would too in a classroom setting,
but I would I would just assume like I was
the only one who did get it, or I and
probably a lot of other people were just ready to leave.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Well, in a classroom, I don't think that factors in.
But as an adult, I think you're right on the money.
I've been in situations where it's a oh, I don't know.
If you're in a public meeting for something, or if
you're on the board of a local garden or whatever and.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
Everything, you can get the sense that everyone wants to
go home.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Yeah, you don't want to be that person. That's like,
I have another point at the end of it.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Right, Well, there's a difference between asking a question and
liking to hear yourself talk.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
Well, very very good point.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
So yeah, that's called pluralistic ignorance, where you feel like,
even though your opinions differ, you are making an assumption
about the rest of the group that you that they
feel this way. So you don't want to make waves
when it turns out that most of the group probably
feels the same way you do.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Yeah, for sure. I did want to follow up with
a stat that you found. Yeah, I want to follow
up with you your information because when you were talking
about Fritz, I think this idea that you know, if
you watch the news, you might think every protest leads
to violence, or you know, the summer of violence with
George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and stuff like that,
(40:15):
or pro Palestinian campus protests. There are stats on this stuff,
like there's raw numbers and of the five hundred and
fifty three pro Palestine campus protests between April and April
eighteenth and May third, twenty twenty four, ninety seven percent
were what was classified as overwhelmingly peaceful. And the same
with Black Lives Matter. There were twenty four hundred demonstrations
(40:40):
after the murder of George Floyd, and I think it
was ninety three percent of them remained entirely peaceful. They
were less than two hundred and twenty out of the
twenty four hundred that had any kind of violence whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
Right, So that's good news.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I mean, yeah, that's great news. And I think that
the Black Lives Matter George Floyd protests were one of
the things that really kind of changed a lot of
scholarship or gave a lot of weight to some of
the emerging scholarship that crowds actually aren't bad necessarily and
they can be beneficial socially too.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
Yeah, because they don't.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
The news doesn't cover twenty four hundred pieceful protests, right,
they cover the ones, you know, And I guess I
get it because it's the news, And if it's.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
I guess I get it. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Yeah, I want to do an episode on how the
news affects the world and how it has so far,
because I think it's done a lot of damage.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
There's one other thing too we mentioned, like say, the
presence of police in riot gear can actually trigger violence
that otherwise might not have taken place in a crowd.
That's not the only thing. If there are weapons of
whoever has the weapons, that can change things. And then
another really big one that cannot be overlooked is the
(41:56):
presence of a lot of people on alcohol. Yeah, that
has caused a lot of riots. It just has Like
you're not going to set a couch on fire in
the street normally, but if you're drunk and you're part
of a crowd that who's basketball team just lost in
the final four, there's a good chance you're going to
do something like that. And alcohol fuels a lot of
(42:19):
the problematic, unlawful crowds that turn ugly.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Yeah, those the It's a lot of times it's the
winning team and that just it's always very frustrating to
see the news after a city has won a big,
important championship. Yeah, important to the fans, And then there's
a big group of people like I've been among those parties.
I remember in Athens when the Braves won their first
World Series back in the day.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Oh, that was just a great night.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
The streets flooded and it was amazing. Yeah, but you know,
we've seen that same thing. All of a sudden, people
are flipping over cop cars.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, it's setting them on fire, and it's like, yeah,
I'm so happy that I'm going to set this car
on fire.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah, it's a shame. It's like ruining it for the best,
for the rest of us and the best of us.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I saw that that same kind of thing ruined the
Keen Pumpkin Festival years back.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
I think we talked about that, did we. I think
years ago you definitely mentioned that. Otherwise, I don't see
how it would have known.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Yeah, I don't remember it at all, but I'll go
with your interpretation.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yeah, it might have been during our early Pumpkin Chunkin
coverage days.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Didn't we do a whole episode on punkin Chunkin?
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Oh yeah, we worked for Discovery Channel.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
We sure did. They made it so, yes, you got
anything else?
Speaker 3 (43:34):
I got nothing else. I thought that was super interesting. Yeah,
did you pick that one?
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Yeah, thank Kimberly.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Yeah, yeah, thanks Kimberly. But it was interesting, Chuck, and
thanks for doing that, and I'll thank myself from you
as well. Okay, since I just thank myself on behalf
of Chuck, I think it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (43:55):
I was thinking about the way and you diverted that
to Kimberly.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Okay, afflicted.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Hey, guys, I was listening to the short stuff about
color psychology, and I got to say I was a
little disappointed there was no mention of drunk tank pink.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Didn't know this. If it's not obvious.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
It gets his name from being the go to color
of choice for drunk tanks because of the noticeable calming
effect it has on belligerent people. I was so intrigued
by this that I painted my bathroom drunk tank pink.
Is Hannah. Hannah sent in a picture too. I didn't
ask Hannah why she felt the need to do this,
but she did it.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
There's a book called Drunk Tank Pink by author Adam
Alter that dives into the psychology behind it, and I'd
think you would both find this super interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Man, I'm sorry we missed that, because that is awesome.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
And by the way, Hannah got tickets to our show
in Akron, Ohio as a birthday present for her partner Awesome,
who had been listening since he was fifteen years old.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Wow and no seventy two.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Yeah, that's right, and asked if we could give an
on stage shout out, and Hannah sadly, we don't do
that because we get a lot of requests and it's
no fun sitting around as an audience member for ten
minutes while we read people's names.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
So we're gonna do it right here.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Wish a very future happy birthday to Isaac Canise.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Nice Happy birthday, Isaac.
Speaker 7 (45:11):
That was quite magnanimous, so Chuck, Yeah, because we usually
don't do it on the episode either, But since Drunk
Tank Pink was such a great email, Hannah, we want
to say happy happy birthday to Isaac and we hope
you both have a great time in Akron.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yes, yeah, we'll see you guys there. Make sure you
stand up and go drunk Tank Pink in the middle
of the show.
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Oh no, don't.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
If you want to be like Hannah, you can send
us an email too. Say whatever you like in it
and we will love it. Just send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Com Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5 (45:48):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry, and he squeezes together in a one meter
square space. We're still doing pretty good on Stuff you
should Know, you.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Know, as funny as I was reading, and then we'll get
to it. But when things start to become problematic as
far as people per square meter, and I started to panic.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Oh really, Yeah, that didn't get me, But it occurred
to me that some people listening to this are going
to feel that way too.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yeah, because we're talking about crowds, and if even the
discussion of being in very close proximity to someone else
triggers you, then consider this your warning.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, great, great job, Chuck. Yeah, sure, So we are
talking crowds today, Chuck, you spoiled the entire episode by
mentioning that, Yeah, I'm just kidding, buddy. And generally think
of this this huge mass of people, say like at
a concert or something like that, or a show if
you're into indie bands, but it can be any assemblage
(01:14):
of people, any group of people. I'm guessing more than
two if that old adage is correct, about three being
a crowd, but it can be anything from a bunch
of people in an elevator to a bunch of people
going to Mecca flocking to Mecca for the Hodge on
any given year.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, I think like technically just any any grouping who
put this one together.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
By the way, initially.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
This was a Julia joint And thank you for reminding
me before we go further. Kimberly from the Prison Labor
listener Mail is the person who got this one going.
So thanks Kimberly.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Okay, yeah, thanks big time because I thought this was
super interesting. But yeah, yeah, I mean Julia did some
research and basically came back with this a crowd as
any group of people temporarily gathered in the same physical
relatively close to each other elevators.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Sure, I mean it's a little surprising if you think
about it. For some reason, I got hooked on the
elevator thing. But there's a lot of different reasons those
people could be together. They're all going to different floors
in the same building, say if they happen to be
on an elevator, or they could all have a shared
interest they're all at a gun show, or they have
(02:25):
a shared goal they're trying to overthrow their regime, their
ruling regime. There's all sorts of different reasons people come
together in crowds. Sometimes it's on purpose, sometimes it's not
planned by that person, but it just happens. And one
of the cool things is we've been studying crowds through
all sorts of different lenses, and we've kind of whittled
(02:46):
down to the fact that humans are essentially innately good
at navigating crowds for the most part.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, you know, some of the stuff Julia came back
with was fairly like you might be a little scared
of crowds, but it is good to know that that
is sort of outdated thinking and why we will talk
about bad things that can happen in crowds. The modern
understanding of crowds, You're right, is that people are generally
pretty orderly, even in the face of disaster, and the
(03:20):
things that make a crowd go bad. A lot of
times it's not the crowd's fault.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, they get blamed by authorities very frequently in retrospect,
and then in further retrospect it turns out like, no, actually,
the authorities are probably at fault in this case.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, I mean it's almost as if sometimes a peaceful
protest can turn bad when an armed military shows up, right,
just the presence of that, just the presence and then
other things that happen after.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Right, So yes, and we'll talk about that for sure,
because there is a huge role for law enforcement and
dealing with crowds, like it's part of their job. Sure,
crowd out, they say crowd control, but that's apparently an
outdated term as well. But dealing with crowds, managing crowds,
So that's part of their job. That's not gonna go away.
We don't really want it to go away. Instead, we
(04:11):
want law enforcement to do it in the using the
best practices that have been proven over and over again
that cut down the chance of a crowd turning ugly
by huge percentages.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, but you know, one thing is for sure, like
people behave differently in crowds, and sometimes it's great. You know,
I never I never dance like this man, but I'm
at burning man and look at me all of a sudden, right,
or it can turn bad and we're gonna we're gonna
cover all angles.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Well, let's talk about some of the bad ones, because
there are some famous ones that this happens. You don't
want to say a lot, but it's one of those
things like a plane crash, where it seems like it
will happen all the time because it's just so shocking
details of it. Whenever it does happen, it seems like
it happens way more frequently. That's just not the case.
But when it does happen, like I said, it can
(05:03):
be pretty bad.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, you know, because people can get trampled, people can
be squashed by force, like in a crowd rush. Pressure
can reach a thousand pounds of force, which is a lot. Yeah,
that can lead to loss of life, notably, like you said,
we're going to mention a handful, but the Astro World
Festival in Houston very sadly in twenty twenty one at
the Travis Scott performance, ten people lost their lives and
(05:26):
many more were injured.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, there was one I hadn't heard of that was
pretty bad, quite bad. It happened at the coronation of
Zar Nicholas the Second in Moscow in eighteen ninety six. Yeah,
there was a crowd of half a million people who
were all there for the coronation, and they knew that
they were giving out free souvenirs. Essentially, I saw half
a pound of sausage, bags of nuts, a souvenir cup,
(05:50):
and apparently they had enough for everybody, but a rumor
spread in the crowd that they didn't have enough for everybody,
so the people in the back started pushing. A stampede
broke out. In thirteen one hundred people died.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yeah, it feels like concerts.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
In sporting events, it can be dozens of people, which
is all incredibly sad, But when people in the order
of thousands are dying, yeah, from an event, that's pretty striking.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And that really follows the model. It seems like for
loss of life in crowd crushes, there's some sort of
bottleneck toward the front, and it's wider in back, so
people in back start pushing and the people in front
can't go forward, so they get crushed. That seems to
be like the case. That's what happened in Astro World,
(06:33):
That's what happened in Moscow, That's what happened in Dusburg, Germany,
at the world's largest techno festival, the Love Parade.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Twenty ten twenty one people died and it was a
tunnel in that case.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, it also happened. I mentioned the Haje and two
thousand people. Two thousand people died at the Hajje as
part of that annual pilgrim to Mecca that all Muslims
are required to do at least once in their lifetime. Well,
they have like on the order of one and a
half million people, up to two million people every year
(07:11):
do this thing. And in twenty fifteen, two thousand people
died because there was a bottleneck people push from the back,
and that actually broke the previous record of the most
people killed in a crowd crush that was also at
the Hajj, this time in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yeah, super super sad. Because of all these tragedies, people
have been studying how people move through crowds, crowd dynamics.
It's you know, they use a lot of different sciences.
Physics definitely is one, and we're going to talk about
all these, but also physiology, psychology certainly, and what they're
looking at is human behavior, how people behave when they
(07:51):
get into crowd because it changes once you have sort
of a veil of anonymity going on, and again it
can be good or bad. But they use this in
all all kinds of modeling, whether it's you know, in
city planning or certainly event preparation, disaster management, crowd management,
all kinds of people like we'll pay people a lot
of money to study and give their findings.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
And you mentioned applying the principles of physics to studying this.
I think that started in the fifties. And it's not
like tit for tat, but the movement and the formation
of crowds resembles it so much that you can basically
use physics terms like orbital motion or oscillators to basically
(08:34):
describe how people behave in a crowd and how crowds
behave themselves. One of the ways of looking at a
systems theory and complex adapted systems are what crowds do.
It's chaotic at first, but then they start to move
together as a whole. Lines of communication develop without speech.
It's just kind of like the crowd learns through feedback
(08:55):
and it just starts. It becomes a cohesive of whole
rather than just a bunch of people together into space.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, I mean, certainly fluid dynamics is a factor, and
they kind of use some of that terminology as well
when talking about crowds, because if you're a fluid, like
let's say you're a liquid or even a gas, the
particles are really tightly packed, but they're never actually colliding
because they have electrons repelling each other. Yeah, we do
a similar thing, but it's called what's known as social force.
(09:27):
It's that thing when you're in a crowd and you
just unconsciously instinctively navigate without like constantly bumping into other people,
at least if.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
You're doing it right right.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I've been in crowds where people are a little more unaware,
and there may be reasons for that, so I'm not
like casting aspersions. But generally speaking, your body is just
automatically adjusting because you want that path of least resistance.
You don't want to be banging into people all around you.
And even in great crowds like a huge excited stadium
(10:03):
after a big sports win or after a big energetic
concert or something, you still find your way out of
there generally, you know, not making contact with other people.
Maybe slight you know, bumps here and there, but unless
someone really has their head up their butt or they're
super drunk, or there may be other you know, some
(10:24):
genuine factor. They can't help. They're not just banging right
into people constantly.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah. That made me wonder if it's electrons repelling each
other that keeps liquids from bumping into one another. I
wonder if the collective group of electrons in our bodies
are what makes us inherently makes us inherently avoid it
and almostatic sense for that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I like that, Eddie.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It's like the quantum explanation of swerving.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah, little hippie dippy.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So there are a couple things that we've figured out
about crowds that the way that they behave is again,
this is spontaneous. I don't even know if we've said it,
so maybe not. Again, it's spontaneous, it's unconscious typically, and
it's collective. Right, So we're actually moving cooperatively with other people,
whether we realize it or not. We think we're just
(11:12):
trying to make it to the exit because we want
to get to our car first so we can get
the heck out of the parking lot as soon as possible.
But we're actually unconsciously moving in conjunction with other people.
One of the really great ways that that expresses itself
is in lane formation, which is well, it's exactly what
it sounds like, right.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, it's people kind of gathering and moving in one
direction together forming a lane. No one's taking the lead
and saying everyone, this is the United States, So we
generally walk down the right side of the hallway or
the corridor and other people on the left. That is
something when I've traveled abroad I had to get used
to because I didn't realize the rules of the road
(11:55):
typically apply to moving around the world as well. So
I I didn't know that until I went over to
England for the first time and was bumping into people constantly.
But yeah, here in the United States, it's generally right side,
left side or I guess it doesn't explain it well,
but no, you did you move along the right side
of a hallway?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Sure, And that's just a difference in the electron spin
of people in Europe and the people in the US.
Oh Man, I also mentioned orbital motion too, right, So
apparently in a crowd people moving in the same direction,
or if you're in a crowd, that's just basically in
one place. I think they studied the Festival of the
(12:35):
Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. To get this information.
You basically create you move in a circle in an
orbit is what they call it, and you complete this
orbit in about eighteen seconds. And when I was reading this,
I'm like, that's just not true. And then I went
and watched video of this study, and yes, people just
(12:56):
move around in a tight circle. Basically, you're moving because
other people are moving, but you're ultimately you're keeping your
same space this one orbital circle, which is awesome.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
I mean to be clear, because that sounded slightly confusing.
People are not walking in a tight circle. You're just
moving your body within a circular space, right, like maybe
raising your elbow to scratch your head or something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Right, So imagine imagine the person in front of you.
Imagine the person in front of you is backing up,
so you back up and then you maybe moved to
the right, and then they move this way and you
kind of come forward to your left, and then you
kind of back up a little bit to your left,
and then you back up center like that. So you're
facing the same way the whole time, but you're just
(13:43):
shuffling your feet in the way that you're doing this.
You're ultimately creating an orbit.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah, and I think that also applies to just taking
up your personal space with general body.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yes, the electrons.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
So this this works out pretty great, this idea of
social force, it seems to work pretty well. And even
in big crowds, when it starts to get a little
more highly dense is when it's a problem. And this
is where you might get triggered. Like I was. And
I don't even mind crowds, but when it started talking
and getting like denser and denser, I just found myself
(14:17):
getting a little you know, my breathing sort of increased.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So at two people per square meter, a crowd moves
a little slower because they're still trying to you know,
get that distance between you and and your friend next
to you. Four people, you're going to start to bump
around a little bit. At six people, things get truly difficult.
And at ten people per square meter and I measured
that out on the floor, that made me panic a
(14:42):
little bit. That means individual movement is basically impossible, and
the likelihood of, like in a big crowd that's that dense,
something bad is likely to happen.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah, this is the point where you can't raise your arms,
they're at your side. If a crush starts to have happened,
you can't breathe, so they're like, you can die of asphyxiation.
There is a very famous tragedy in twenty twenty two
in Soul, a Taiwan, tragedy where kids in their twenties,
(15:14):
healthy kids in their twenties died of heart attacks because
they asphyxiated and their heart stopped because of a crowd crush. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And if you're wondering what this all looks like, we
didn't do big max. Should do one big max, but
six people per square meter where you know it's not tragic,
but movement is difficult. That's about seventeen hundred people packed
onto a tennis court.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yep, So that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah, and that was at six. We're talking ten is
when you can really be in trouble. Now, that is
not guaranteed that something's going to go wrong. In a
Taiwan there were like this, This situation was going on
for an hour or so before it turned problematic. So
as long as the people in the back are doing
(16:00):
good and not pushing, as long as somebody in the
center doesn't faint and fall over or trip and fall down.
This can work. It's not inherently going to be deadly,
but the chances of it becoming dead it's just sitting
there balancing on the razor's edge at that point, it's
a really dangerous place to be.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah, it's that one triggering incident is when it can
really go south there.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, for sure, it's scary.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Shall we take a break, Yes, all right, we'll be
right back with more crowds.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Stop you shut.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
All right. So we covered partially coverage physics.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
We should talk a little bit about psychology because crowds
have their own distinct psychology around them as well, and
people can behave in ways that they don't normally behave
in a crowd just because of that psychology. And early
on the explanation for that was like, if there's a
violent crowd, then it was just full of violent people, right.
(17:21):
And there was a French psychologist named Gustave Lebon in
eighteen ninety five who wrote the literal book on this,
like the first one called the Crowd Colon a Study
of the Popular Mind, and it was very influential. But
this is one of those that's a little outdated in
a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, it's right in some ways. But his whole thing was, like,
you have any crowd together, they're inherently mindless, they form
a collective mind, they become capable of anything. They're very suggestible.
They're going to kill everybody in their path, right, and
like there are crowds that have done that before. Sure,
but that's not the inherent I guess trait of crowds.
(18:04):
Like crowds are actually the opposite. They're actually way more
peaceful and pro social than that. But Lebon essentially set
the view of crowds that's still persistent today in a
lot of quarters. And he did. Yeah, he just had
a huge impact on this.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Absolutely, if you look at the different explanations over the
years of like this collective behavior, because collective behavior is
definitely happening.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
Yeah, there are a few different theories.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
One is a contagion theory and that was put forth
by Lebon himself, which is that this irrational behaviors that
happened in a crowd spreads like a virus. Yeah, that
can happen, and it also can't. So I'm sort of
fifty to fifty on that one.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah. Again, like all of this stuff makes sense. It's
just not like this is the most salacious rare version
of crowds, right. Yeah, you can also make the case
like good positive behavior can be contagious in a crowd
as well, because, like you said, people behave differently in crowds.
That's just a fact.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Yeah, like that dancing at Burning Man.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, exactly. There's also convergence theory, which also makes a
bit of sense that explains why crowds have a collective mind,
and it just basically says that's because crowds are made
up of similar people. Like usually there's not a lot
of crowd like mindless, say behavior on an elevator, because
everybody there didn't come together on the elevator to protest something.
(19:34):
But if you have a protest, there's way more potential
for collective mind behavior because there's people who are there
for the same reason, So they're sharing kind of a
wavelength already when they get there.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, if you're at that concert together, you're there because
you're you want to see Bob Dylan in person, all right,
for the same reason.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Sure, Or you want to hear David Crosby harangue you.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Oh man, he will too, or he would have he did.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Oh yeah, Okay, so that's convergence. There's also group mind
theory a little on the nose. It's basically saying like,
you lose your individual identity and it's replaced as a part,
a cog of this larger group's identity. Yeah, yeah again,
I guess. Yeah, it's not totally off. Social identity theory
(20:24):
seems to be the prevalent, dominant view of I guess
kind of d individuation in crowds.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, that's where you just you're acting like everyone else
is acting because you just want to fit in.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, you can't really put it better than that.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
So how do you become a crowd member? There are
a few key concepts there.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
First, you have to get training, go to school.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Got to go to crowd school, all right, Uh, And
the first thing you need in crowd school is a
lot of people in a very tight spot.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
It's called panic school.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Feeling right now, by the way, I'm okay, And it's
weird because I don't have like, what's it called claustrophobia necessarily.
I think it's more for me, just like I can't
wait to get out of that crowd because I just
want to have a little space.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Maybe I do have a little clusterphobiah.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like it, but I think
everybody does to a degree.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
It's just I guess.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, but I've never you know, I can accept hugs.
And I was never one of those kids like under
the dog pile that was like freaking out or.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Anything like that.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Oh yeah, I did not like that.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
Yeah, well you have a little claustrophobia, right.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, a little bit. I've kind of outgrown it a lot.
But yeah, if you put me in like a sewer
culvert or hearing about like a caving accident, I mean
I'll start Yeah, I can't handle that.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
Well, maybe you have a fear of dying.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
That could be it.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
That might be what's going on, which is rational.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
But what are we talking about.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
We're talking about the three key concepts that form these
foundations of collected behavior, and they are d oh Man,
D individuation, Yeah, emotional contagion, and suggestibility. And that first one,
D individuation is basically like kind of what you were
(22:18):
hinting at earlier, is there's this new social identity and
your individual identity is taking a break.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, And this is a good example of how this
stuff can kind of make sense, but it's also like
you really just paid attention to the worst part of it.
And this came from Philip Bombardo. Remember him from the
Stanford Prison experiment. Oh yeah, that was all about d individuation.
So yeah, he focused some work on crowds, and essentially
what he said is that, yeah, you just basically leave
(22:48):
your own identity at the door. You take on a
new identity of crowd member, group member, and basically whatever
the group's up for, e're up for. Two. You feel anonymous,
you feel unidentified. You also feel connected to those other people,
and so if those other people start, you know, looting
or something like that, you would probably never loot by yourself, right,
(23:12):
But since you're in that group, you've lost your individual
identity that would prevent you from looting. Now it's like, well, yeah,
I mean I'm part of this group and we're looting,
so let's get to it.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
I think that's fascinating and I think that is so
true and happens all the time, and we've seen it
in all across Like I feel like in recent years,
especially with various protests and you know, things that people
might call riots, things that people might call insurrections where
people that normally wouldn't behave in a certain way, like, Hey,
(23:45):
I was going down to the Capitol Building to voice
my opinion about how this country is being run, and
next thing you know, I'm beating a cop down with
a flagpole, and that normally I would not do something.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Like that exactly, And that's a great example of that.
On the other side of it, you might never dance
with your shirt out wearing nothing but a loincloth burning
me yes, But in a different situation, you could be
having just one of the greatest moments of your life totally.
And that's not just the ecstasy speaking friend, that is
you being a part of a crowd and feeling that
(24:18):
kind of exhilaration of being part connected to something larger
than yourself. So it's the same thing in a sense.
You're deindividuated one way or another. It's just how is
it going? Is it going positive? Is it going negative?
Or is it even neutral?
Speaker 4 (24:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yeah, I think this is all just very fascinating. The
second one we mentioned was emotional contagion, and that is
just the fact that you know, emotions in a crowd
are heightened anyway if you're there at that concert or
that protest, you're highly emotional, probably for whatever reason you're there,
or if your team just won the big game and
you're leaving in a big crowd, so you're aware of
(24:59):
the people around you. But that like one person, and
you've seen it before in any of those circumstances where
one person again triggers something because they're extra emo, and
all of a sudden, everyone rises to meet that level
of emotion.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah. One thing I saw, though, I think it's part
of social identity theory, is that that depends on the
mood of the group or the norms of the group.
So if it's like a group that is generally saying like,
we're a peaceful protest, somebody can come up and throw
a Molotov cocktail and everybody else in the group's gonna
look at them like, what the heck are you doing. Yeah,
they will isolate that person, ostracize that person, and continue
(25:37):
on with their peaceful protests. But if the norm of
the group is like, yeah, we're being like repressed here
and somebody throws a Molotov cocktail, there's a good chance
that that crowd will change its norms to include throwing
molotov cocktails and more people will join in.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah, I mean you used to hang out in a
moshpit or two back in the day. I'm sure, right, yeah,
here and there, the mashpit. I mean, I think they
could be and they probably have been studied within the
crowd dynamics because it's sort of just a microcosm. But
I remember in those days and I wasn't like, oh man,
I can't wait to get in that mash pit, but
(26:13):
if one broke out around me, I would find myself
in it like having a good time, and the same
thing would happen. I was in moshpits where there was
one jerk throwing elbows and everyone's like, get out of here, dude.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
And then I've been in others where all of a
sudden that one dude triggered another dude, and then all
of a sudden it got.
Speaker 5 (26:31):
A little scary in there. And that's when.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Chuck took a walk.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And then also there's there's often that jerk that's like
not even in the pit. He just pushes people in
who weren't planning on joining.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Yeah, that should be a choice.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
That guy needs to soak his head.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I had a quick story here about the first or
not the first Lola Plusa, the one with the Beastie
Boys and at Lakewood Amphitheater, big outdoor Amphitheater on the lawn,
the mash pit behind us.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
I was in this one, but it got so big.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
It was about it big was it was about a
third of the size of an amphitheater lawn and it
was swirling in the circle and people started throwing up
their their cups and stuff, and there the trash around them,
and that stuff formed a whirlpool, a tunnel of trash. Wow,
as if a tornado was taking it up.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
That's amazing, or at least that's what I saw.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
That's you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
That's a world class mosh pit right there.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
It was.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I've never seen anything like it. And I've been around
a lot of big shows like that, and I've never
seen anything like that.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
That's like that part from American Beauty where the kid
sees the plastic bag caught up in the little whirlwind.
It's like, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Yeah, I used to think that was the best movie
ever hit. I don't think it's aged. Well, not just
not just because it's spacey. The whole thing is kind
of corny to me.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Now when I think about it, Well, I'm not gonna
watch it again then. Yeah, okay, there's one more I
guess aspect that you mentioned too, which is suggestibility, and
this is I think another Lebon thing, who, by the way,
as far as I can tell, is not related to
Simon Lebon. H Yeah, but Lebon basically was like they're
(28:14):
de individuated. They are basically capable of anything, and if
there's like that, you could tell them whatever and they'll
go do it. This definitely, I mean, just from recent
experience like this can happen, but it requires typically a
central leader or or organizer that people are looking to,
(28:35):
a charismatic speaker, somebody who can actually tap into that
collective mind and push it one direction or another. That
is possible, but again that is fairly rare when that
when something like that happens, but it again, it is possible.
It does happen sometimes.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Well, I mean I don't think we mentioned earlier. Hitler
and Mussolini both studied the works of Lebon.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
M Yeah, and I mean like they mobilized it to
their own ends. They used it to generate nationalism and
xenophobia and essentially create like their own fascist states. Because
it does work if you do it right and you
have a crowd in the right mindset.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
That's right, that's nuts, dude, Should we break or keep going?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
I say we.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
All right, we can break.
Speaker 6 (29:27):
You have my permission, stop you shut.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
So one of the great things Chuck about studying crowds
is that you you can figure out what makes crowds
do what, and they have in a lot of ways,
not just how they behave like physics or what the
psychology is behind crowds, but like what triggers crowds to say,
change their mood because remember I said, like depending on
the norms, like they may or may not behave violently
(30:16):
or unlawfully, and that can change with the same crowd
depending on the circumstances. And one of the like a
good example of that is that if you have been
if you're a law enforcement officer and you're there and
you basically your whole squad is like it's a protest,
So of course they're going to turn violent and they're
going to throw rocks at us and stuff like that.
(30:38):
Just being primed to believe that actually makes it more
likely that the crowd will behave that way. It's it's
not like we have it reversed. So like like you said,
just the presence of a law enforcement like group or
force in riot gear makes it more likely that a
crowd will turn violent.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah, for sure, they have this new I don't know
how widespread it is yet, but one of the newer
developments in this kind of quote unquote crowd control is
something called the dialogue team. Yeah, and that's when you
get your nicest cop I guess, yeah, and make them
the public facing face of that unit, and they put
(31:22):
them out in the lead and they communicate their purpose there,
their presence there, how they'd like things to go, and
it's and apparently it works a lot better than just
showing up and standing there, beating that billy club into
your hand and staring down at people in all your
heavy gear. Apparently that has a quite a great calming
(31:42):
effect on crowds and can even see the police presence
is a little more benevolent and cause the crowd to
maybe self police a little more.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah. Yeah, So the chances of the crowd turning ugly
is way decreased when you have that kind of that,
like you said, public facing kind of law enforcement, Like
you still have the riot gear. You may even still
have a line of guys with assault rifles with rubber
bullets and there's like the m wrap like off in
(32:13):
the distance, but that's not what you have up against
the crowd. You have friendly officers that are explaining that
they're there to protect your First Amendment rights but also
keep you safe. And yeah, like you said, self police
in getting a crowd to police itself. Yeah, is I mean,
that's just the pinnacle of crowd control totally. And it
isn't very widespread here, but it's a model that Europe
(32:36):
as a whole has adopted since the early two thousands
of the aughts. Yeah, and so it's starting to spread
over here, but it feels like it's more being that
it's being handed over from Europe to the academics in
America who are trying to give it to law enforcement
in America to take and run with.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Yeah, and the key to any you know, regardless of
the dialogue team out in front, the key to any
sort of peaceful situation in a protest and dealing with
cops do is these cops have to be trained, like
super trained.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
Training is the.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Key to every officer interaction that they take. And most
of these big tragedies that you can point to, and
not just in protests, but just any kind of these
crushing tragedies, Yeah, is the result of untrained officers in
a lot of cases.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah. Sometimes even the people who are in charge of
all of the police there might not be trained in
what they're doing. Like the Sheffield tragedy in I think
nineteen eighty nine. The police were blamed for that, although
the police initially blamed soccer hooligans and it was like, no,
the cops who were in charge of this had no
reason to be in charge of this. They had no
(33:51):
training whatsoever. Yea, So that is a huge one for sure.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
A couple of sociologists came along to do a lot
of the sort of official refutation of Lebon in the
twentieth century, and it was the Italian guy.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
You mentioned this guy, Henrico.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
I didn't, did I mention an Italian guy?
Speaker 4 (34:13):
I thought you mentioned an Italian guy.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
But regardless whether he's showing up for the first time
or the second, Okay, A guy named Enrico Quarantelli He
looked at a lot of emergency evacuations and studied them,
and he basically came to the conclusion that usually people
flee from these things, obviously because it's the sensible thing
to do, but it's not necessarily a panicked, irrational group
(34:37):
of people. They do so generally order in an orderly fashion.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk about emergency identity
because one of the things, one of the ways that
that crowds kind of create like a different a different
way of thinking is Let's say you have a group
of people on a subway, and the subway like it's
running normally. They are just a group of strangers trying
not to make eye contact with one another, on their
(35:02):
way home, on their way to work, on their way wherever.
They have no affiliation with one another aside from the
fact that they're currently sharing space with one another. If
that subway breaks down, those strangers become a group almost
instantly once they realize, okay, we're stuck. The human tendency
that recent scholarship has found is to come together as
(35:24):
a group, help one another, start to actually care what
happens to every other member of the group, trust one another,
treat one another with respect, and that that happens in
disaster after disaster after disaster, or subway breakdown after subway breakdown.
There was another sociologist I don't have his name, but
he studied like one hundred and eighty different peacetime disasters
(35:48):
and basically found, Yeah, there's jerks in every crowd, but
for the most part, they are the vast majority of
people act pro socially and positively to come together as
a group in the face of a disaster.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, that was Charles Fritz and I couldn't help but
think of Elaine Venice the second you mentioned the subway stopping.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Oh, I don't remember that one.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Oh it was the great Seinfeld episode where Elaine was
stuck on a out of work subway malfunctioning subway.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
It was pretty great.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I had a great experience in New York years ago,
and I might have told this one before, but where
there was a guy kind of stomping up and down
the subway platform saying he was going to shove someone
onto the oncoming train, and just instinctively, a group of
twenty New Yorkers and me went and gathered together in
(36:42):
a group with a mother and her baby at the
center of that atom.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
Wow, at the nucleus.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
And it wasn't no one said all right, everyone, let's
get together here. We all just stood together, got just
wandered closer to one another and probably all making our
way toward that woman and her baby. And before you
know it, there was a big group of us standing
in a circle. And that's the one where I went
and met the cops upstairs and led them to the guy.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I was pretty obvious who it was, but I was like, hey,
he's down here, and boy, New York City's finest.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
They acted with intention, that's all I'll all say.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I see, yeah, so what you just said. That story
undermines a very famous, misguided idea about crowds, the bystander effect,
which we talked about at great length in our episode
on Kitty Jenavsi.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
But one study I saw recently found that they were
studying all sorts of fights that were caught on like
security cameras or whatever. Uh huh, and I think ninety
percent of these fights at least one person intervened. Most
of the time more than one person intervened, and the
bystander effect says the more people there are, the less
(38:02):
likely anyone needs to act to help. They found the
opposite was true. The more people there were, the more
people helped intervene in this violent fight. So that whole
idea that people just don't do that is actually untrue.
It's based on misreporting by a New York Times article.
That's right, there are there's evidence that there are other
(38:24):
reasons people might not necessarily not render aid, but say,
not speak up or share their opinions because they're in
a group too. Right.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Uh. Yeah, that's sort of like if you're in a
classroom and the teacher asks if anyone has anything else
to say or whatever, or has any questions, and nobody
says anything, even though they might have questions.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I remember doing that.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
Sure it would still do that.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, I'm sure I would too in a classroom setting,
but I would I would just assume like I was
the only one who did get it, or I and
probably a lot of other people were just ready to leave.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Well, in a classroom, I don't think that factors in.
But as an adult, I think you're right on the money.
I've been in situations where it's a oh, I don't know.
If you're in a public meeting for something, or if
you're on the board of a local garden or whatever and.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
Everything, you can get the sense that everyone wants to
go home.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Yeah, you don't want to be that person. That's like,
I have another point at the end of it.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Right, Well, there's a difference between asking a question and
liking to hear yourself talk.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
Well, very very good point.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
So yeah, that's called pluralistic ignorance, where you feel like,
even though your opinions differ, you are making an assumption
about the rest of the group that you that they
feel this way. So you don't want to make waves
when it turns out that most of the group probably
feels the same way you do.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Yeah, for sure. I did want to follow up with
a stat that you found. Yeah, I want to follow
up with you your information because when you were talking
about Fritz, I think this idea that you know, if
you watch the news, you might think every protest leads
to violence, or you know, the summer of violence with
George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and stuff like that,
(40:15):
or pro Palestinian campus protests. There are stats on this stuff,
like there's raw numbers and of the five hundred and
fifty three pro Palestine campus protests between April and April
eighteenth and May third, twenty twenty four, ninety seven percent
were what was classified as overwhelmingly peaceful. And the same
with Black Lives Matter. There were twenty four hundred demonstrations
(40:40):
after the murder of George Floyd, and I think it
was ninety three percent of them remained entirely peaceful. They
were less than two hundred and twenty out of the
twenty four hundred that had any kind of violence whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
Right, So that's good news.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I mean, yeah, that's great news. And I think that
the Black Lives Matter George Floyd protests were one of
the things that really kind of changed a lot of
scholarship or gave a lot of weight to some of
the emerging scholarship that crowds actually aren't bad necessarily and
they can be beneficial socially too.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
Yeah, because they don't.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
The news doesn't cover twenty four hundred pieceful protests, right,
they cover the ones, you know, And I guess I
get it because it's the news, And if it's.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
I guess I get it. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Yeah, I want to do an episode on how the
news affects the world and how it has so far,
because I think it's done a lot of damage.
Speaker 5 (41:32):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
There's one other thing too we mentioned, like say, the
presence of police in riot gear can actually trigger violence
that otherwise might not have taken place in a crowd.
That's not the only thing. If there are weapons of
whoever has the weapons, that can change things. And then
another really big one that cannot be overlooked is the
(41:56):
presence of a lot of people on alcohol. Yeah, that
has caused a lot of riots. It just has Like
you're not going to set a couch on fire in
the street normally, but if you're drunk and you're part
of a crowd that who's basketball team just lost in
the final four, there's a good chance you're going to
do something like that. And alcohol fuels a lot of
(42:19):
the problematic, unlawful crowds that turn ugly.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Yeah, those the It's a lot of times it's the
winning team and that just it's always very frustrating to
see the news after a city has won a big,
important championship. Yeah, important to the fans, And then there's
a big group of people like I've been among those parties.
I remember in Athens when the Braves won their first
World Series back in the day.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Oh, that was just a great night.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
The streets flooded and it was amazing. Yeah, but you know,
we've seen that same thing. All of a sudden, people
are flipping over cop cars.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, it's setting them on fire, and it's like, yeah,
I'm so happy that I'm going to set this car
on fire.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah, it's a shame. It's like ruining it for the best,
for the rest of us and the best of us.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I saw that that same kind of thing ruined the
Keen Pumpkin Festival years back.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
I think we talked about that, did we. I think
years ago you definitely mentioned that. Otherwise, I don't see
how it would have known.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Yeah, I don't remember it at all, but I'll go
with your interpretation.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yeah, it might have been during our early Pumpkin Chunkin
coverage days.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Didn't we do a whole episode on punkin Chunkin?
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Oh yeah, we worked for Discovery Channel.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
We sure did. They made it so, yes, you got
anything else?
Speaker 3 (43:34):
I got nothing else. I thought that was super interesting. Yeah,
did you pick that one?
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Yeah, thank Kimberly.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Yeah, yeah, thanks Kimberly. But it was interesting, Chuck, and
thanks for doing that, and I'll thank myself from you
as well. Okay, since I just thank myself on behalf
of Chuck, I think it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (43:55):
I was thinking about the way and you diverted that
to Kimberly.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Okay, afflicted.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Hey, guys, I was listening to the short stuff about
color psychology, and I got to say I was a
little disappointed there was no mention of drunk tank pink.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
Didn't know this. If it's not obvious.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
It gets his name from being the go to color
of choice for drunk tanks because of the noticeable calming
effect it has on belligerent people. I was so intrigued
by this that I painted my bathroom drunk tank pink.
Is Hannah. Hannah sent in a picture too. I didn't
ask Hannah why she felt the need to do this,
but she did it.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
There's a book called Drunk Tank Pink by author Adam
Alter that dives into the psychology behind it, and I'd
think you would both find this super interesting.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Man, I'm sorry we missed that, because that is awesome.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
And by the way, Hannah got tickets to our show
in Akron, Ohio as a birthday present for her partner Awesome,
who had been listening since he was fifteen years old.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Wow and no seventy two.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Yeah, that's right, and asked if we could give an
on stage shout out, and Hannah sadly, we don't do
that because we get a lot of requests and it's
no fun sitting around as an audience member for ten
minutes while we read people's names.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
So we're gonna do it right here.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Wish a very future happy birthday to Isaac Canise.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Nice Happy birthday, Isaac.
Speaker 7 (45:11):
That was quite magnanimous, so Chuck, Yeah, because we usually
don't do it on the episode either, But since Drunk
Tank Pink was such a great email, Hannah, we want
to say happy happy birthday to Isaac and we hope
you both have a great time in Akron.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yes, yeah, we'll see you guys there. Make sure you
stand up and go drunk Tank Pink in the middle
of the show.
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Oh no, don't.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
If you want to be like Hannah, you can send
us an email too. Say whatever you like in it
and we will love it. Just send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Com Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5 (45:48):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Josh Clark
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Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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Betrayal Season 5
Saskia Inwood woke up one morning, knowing her life would never be the same. The night before, she learned the unimaginable – that the husband she knew in the light of day was a different person after dark. This season unpacks Saskia’s discovery of her husband’s secret life and her fight to bring him to justice. Along the way, we expose a crime that is just coming to light. This is also a story about the myth of the “perfect victim:” who gets believed, who gets doubted, and why. We follow Saskia as she works to reclaim her body, her voice, and her life. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.